UN announces team to investigate claims of torture and labor camps in North Korea
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The United Nations has announced a team of three human rights investigators in a bid to gather information on alleged torture and imprisonment camps in North Korea.
The U.N. Human Rights Council launched a one-year inquiry on March 21, and it hopes to speak to camp survivors and exiles to document violations that it could use to build a case for prosecution, Reuters reports.
The alleged labor and torture camps are believed to house at least 200,000 people, but North Korea denies their existence, according to activists.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"There is sufficient evidence outside of North Korea about what is happening inside, so the government can't keep a lid on it anymore,” Julie de Rivero, who works for Human Rights Watch, told Reuters. “That's why this investigation is so needed."
The investigators are Michael Donald Kirby, a former Australia High Court justice, Sonja Biserko, a founder of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia and Indonesia’s Marzuki Darusman, who is the current U.N. special rapporteur to North Korea.